


Harvest Blight

by SilentMemento



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Explicit Language, F/M, Gen, No humans, The Last of Us like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 16:38:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17005254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentMemento/pseuds/SilentMemento
Summary: As society is on the brink of collapse, a scientist, a former black ops specialist, and a scavenger must work together to fight off two cults and protect the four remaining grass-types, so that civilization can bloom again.But that's easier said than done.





	Harvest Blight

Day One of Clouddeath

 

The Ariados screamed in agony, cradling his mangled front left leg. Yew had no idea that his colleagues could do that kind of damage, that they could even be capable of resurrecting themselves from the dead. What had it taken...the rain outside? He was the only one who stayed in. It was the damned rain that caused the contractions that led to death...that caused them to rise back up.

 

And he had let them back in when they weren’t themselves. Stupid, stupid, _stupid_ …

 

The pain was getting to him. He tore off a bit of his lab clothes with his pincers, tried to staunch the blood flow from his leg, but there was no use. He was going to lose the entire lower half, possibly more if he didn’t do something quickly.

 

Yew eyed the machete that he had used to hack his colleagues to bits. The blood was still on it. He had an idea. It would be painful, would probably kill him, but there was no other option. He couldn’t go outside in this downpour to find help, and everyone else was dead by his claws. He crawled over to the machete, screaming with every movement.

 

The Ariados grabbed the machete with his right claw, held out his left leg, and swung downward. He howled in pain, but managed to retain enough of his mental state to use his lab clothes to stop the blood from going any further.

 

He rifled through the shelves for any useful items. He found a bottle of painkillers and swallowed two pills. Not satisfied, he looked for anything else that could be used to help him. There was tons of canned food, bottles of water, a flashlight, rope, spare lab clothes, an alkaline torch, a tote bag, raincoats, various medicine, and a compass.

 

Yew grabbed the alkaline torch and the rope. He bit down on the rope before using the torch to cauterize the wound. He felt such a wave of pain that he almost passed out, but he managed to keep conscious before the wound was completely seared shut.

 

He dropped the alkaline torch and downed another two painkiller pills. His eyes felt heavy, and soon enough he fell into a slumber, the lone living creature amongst the dead.

 

\---

 

Day Four of Clouddeath

 

Iceye was scared shitless. As a Froslass who excelled in military black-ops and wetwork, nothing was supposed to scare her, but an army of the dead most certainly fucking did.

 

It was her fear of becoming like them that kept her alive - well, that, and being inside a building when the rain came pouring down. She counted herself fortunate that her instincts had kicked in before she went outdoors, like the rest of her squad and the mons they were supposed to kill.

 

She had long since run out of normal bullets for her rifle, so she used her ice crystals as her go-to ammunition.  _ Hell, that might have to become a thing _ , she thought, given how the zombified Pokemon fell from a single shot to the head with the ice crystals.

 

But the fuckers just kept coming, and they outnumbered her at least a hundred-to-one.

 

Iceye spat another few ice crystals for ammo, and opened fire yet again, this time at the mons who were tearing at her frozen barricade. If there was one thing that the Froslass could brag about, it was being the best shot in her unit, and fortunately for her, the barricade was holding.

 

The battle continued like that for what seemed like an hour, but they were still coming, and they were still outnumbering her a hundred-to-one.

 

“What the fuck do I have to do to kill them all?” she snarled. She sent a shadow ball toward the mons, cutting through a fair few of them like a hot knife through butter. But it wasn’t enough.

 

And then the sun came out, and everything went to hell.

 

The zombified mons screeched in fury and...was that  _ agony _ ? They didn’t just shamble; they  _ ran _ toward the cover of the clouds. It spooked Iceye that they could run, but at the same time, she was elated. The sun was their weakness!

 

She let out a sigh of relief. “Gotta get some rest,” she mumbled. “I’ve been up for...almost two days, I think, killing all of ‘em.”

 

Iceye felt her mind drift off as she fell asleep, not knowing what the next day would bring.

 

\---

 

Day Eight of Clouddeath

 

Slashthroat couldn’t help but think of his pregnant ex, while he scrounged for supplies under the sun. Was she all right? Could there still be any closure?

 

No, he doubted that very much. Hell, he didn’t even know if she was still  _ alive _ at this point. It gave him a dull feeling in the pit of his gut. It was something he regretted every day, almost to the point of giving up on life.

 

But something kept him going. He had no idea what it was. Call it destiny or whatever shit the still-living mons called it, but something gave him a reason to live.

 

He looked at the sun, noting that the clouds weren’t far away. He had to move quickly. Slashthroat had heard other mons call this phenomenon “Clouddeath.” That the rain had purged the land of its water, flying, and grass types, along with sixty-five-percent of the remaining population. That the dead “floaters” had risen with the rain.

 

Some said that it was the work of Arceus or Kyogre or whatever deity controlled the rain, furious with the population of mons as a whole for abandoning their faith. Others said that an evil group of scientists had made it as some sort of sick way to play as gods and goddesses. Still others said that it was natural, that it was what killed off the ancient Pokemon all those millennia ago.

 

Slashthroat didn’t particularly care about the reasons: only the result interested him. Apparently, the floaters didn’t like sunlight or even the night if they didn’t have cloud cover. That meant that he had a certain time to scavenge whatever he could find and go to whatever shelter was available...in theory, at least.

 

The problem with that in practice was that the clouds were quite tricky to predict. They could retreat for a time or they could arrive at one’s location faster than the wind. And Slashthroat was cautious to a fault. It was time to end the scavenging and find shelter. He trekked across the field, looking for a place to spend the night, and - lo and behold - an abandoned building was ready and waiting.

 

As he came closer, though, something didn’t sit right with him. He noticed the doors and windows barricaded with ice, along with the carcasses of many, many dead floaters. His sensitive ears heard a rifle being cocked, and every instinct told him to say something.

 

“Hey, don’t shoot, I’m not a floater!” he yelled.

 

“Wait, you’re alive?” a female voice echoed faintly; apparently, she was very weakened, for some reason. “I’ve been killing these fuckers for the past few days…”

 

“Are you injured?” Slashthroat asked. “Will you let me in?”

 

“Oh, I’m not hurt...but how do I know that you aren’t here to kill me?” the voice said with renewed vigor. 

 

“Are you fucking daft?” he said incredulously. “I’ve got supplies that you obviously need, and you’re refusing out of fear that I  _ might _ kill you?”

 

“You can never be too cautious.”

 

“I swear on my unborn children that I won’t kill you. Now will you fucking let me in?”

 

“Fine. Lemme open the door.”

 

The frost around the door retreated, revealing a Froslass wearing a black jacket and goggles. She appeared quite famished.

 

“Do you have food?” she asked. “I don’t know about you, but I’m fucking starving.”

 

“Yeah, I got canned food here,” Slashthroat said, pulling off his rather-full pack to get supplies before taking out a tin of canned corn. He slid it over to the ghost who dug her hand through the canister to eat the meal.

 

“Thanks,” she mumbled between mouthfuls.

 

“Welcome. Are we on a name basis?”

 

“Iceye. And you are…?”

 

“Slashthroat.”

 

“Wait, really?” Iceye laughed. “That’s the fucking weirdest name I’ve ever heard!”

 

“Don’t laugh; it’s my name.” he muttered, his ears flushing red.

 

“Seriously, were your parents drunk when they named you?”

 

“Shut it. It’s the name of a famed warrior in my family.”

 

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, I guess,” Iceye said with a shrug and a snicker.

 

“Anyway, do you have any weapons?” he asked.

 

“Plenty of them. Problem is that they’re all out of ammo. I’ve been using my ice crystals as bullets, but I don’t know if you can boast the same.”

 

“Could probably use my needles. I shed them pretty much every day. Problem is that those fucking floaters can’t be poisoned, you know, since they’re already dead.”

 

“Wait, you’re calling them what now?”   


“Floaters. You know, since they come with the clouds?”

 

“Yeah, makes as much sense as anything else. But either way, they’re like the zombies in fiction: aim for the head with enough firepower, and they’ll go down.”

 

“All right.” Slashthroat jumped as he heard the sound of thunder in the distance.

 

“Guess I’ll be taking first watch then, Slashthroat. Cheers!” Iceye floated over to the attic, a rare smile on her face.

 

He sighed before catching his reflection in a nearby mirror. It was that of a battle-scarred Nidoking with diamond studs in both nicked-up ears, and a worn-down jacket.

 

He was reminded of his ex. Was she all right? Was she even alive? Were her - no, their - kids still alive?

 

It was the last thing on his mind before he fell asleep.


End file.
